he was trashing the republicans and trashing john boehner. nothing he said would have give be john boehner an incentive to negotiate with the president about anything. >> so what about default, which is a dicier proposition. do you think he's toying with that too? could he welcome that in order to blame it on republicans too? >> interesting news stories that cape out this week. the treasury department, which would have to manage a default, is not giving the market any indication of what its plans are to manage that situation. that's really unusual, paul, for a treasury. not so much the republicans but the market that's going to have to deal with this crisis and they won't tell them what they're going to do. i mean, it suggests that they're planning for a situation that is a tremendous crisis that they can blame on the republicans. it's hard to avoid that conclusion. >> that's very high risk. here's the other thing, james, he may be thinking. which is, you know what, the republicans are going to crack first. they're going to break here. they'r